Everyone agrees that well designed products are intuitive, simple, clean, honest, innovative...except when they're not. It's not the design principles that matter the most – it's the users. And the truth is, users sometimes don't care about intuitive interfaces or usability. Sometimes they embrace products that are barely usable. Products that are ugly. Products that are known for their dark patterns. Sometimes users specifically prefer complex and cluttered interfaces to clean, minimalist apps. Sometimes they spend a lot of money on useless products and actually enjoy them...it all depends on the context.

It's an exciting time to be a designer but we're working in an ever-changing environment where we can't rely solely on design principles and guidelines any more. UX design is not about knowing the right answers, it’s about finding them. In this talk I'll show how focusing on the users' needs might end up creating amazing products even when it means barbarously breaking widely accepted design guidelines.